Nurses
talk truth.
No one knows the true state of health care in Ontario the way nurses do. It’s nurses who deal every day with the disruptions in our precarious, under-resourced system. And it’s nurses who see the direct effects on patient care and wellbeing.
Now nurses are speaking out in their own words, sharing the realities of the staffing shortage, what privatization will mean for public health care, and what nurses and patients are experiencing in a system that’s falling short.
“I think experienced nurses are leaving the public health care system because they are tired, they are run down, they’ve been asked to do way more than they’re capable of.”
The Staffing Shortage:
Anatomy of a Crisis
Lengthening wait times. Unpredictable closures of ER departments. Frustrated patients and family members who know they are falling through the cracks. All these issues - and many others - are symptoms of a single problem: the critical shortage of nurses and health-care professionals in this province.
Underfunding
Governments have been underfunding health care for over a decade, promising that more can be done with less. The Ford government has doubled down on this approach, deliberately underspending on health care even when the COVID pandemic was at its worst.
Stress and burnout
Nurses care deeply about the vital work they do. But impossible workloads mean every day they are forced to make difficult choices, prioritizing some patients while giving less attention to others. They constantly struggle to meet appropriate standards of care. The result is increasing stress and high levels of burnout.
Short Staffing
Underfunding inevitably leads to understaffing. When there aren’t enough nurses and health care professionals in the system, workloads increase dramatically, and that means the quality of patient care continuously declines…until it becomes a true crisis that can’t be covered up.
Nurses Are Leaving
Pushed beyond their limits, nurses are walking away from front-line positions in the public system. Vacancy levels for nursing positions have reached an all-time high, and many communities can’t attract the nurses they desperately need. As the crisis , workloads get heavier for those who remain. Stress and burnout get even worse, prompting more to leave in despair. It’s a vicious spiral with serious consequences for health care in this province.
“Why is Doug Ford not fighting for public health care? Because that’s what people want, a system they can count on.”
The Risks of
Privatization
Canadians place a high value on public health care. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Doug Ford. He’s pushing ahead on for-profit care, and he’s moving as quickly as possible to get it. But privatization won’t solve the nursing shortage that is the root cause of the health-care crisis. A government that truly prioritized equal access to care would be funding the public system adequately, not selling it out. It would be investing in nurses and health-care professionals to retain them. And it would be standing with nurses, not against them.
Poaching of staff
There’s already a drastic health-care staffing shortage in Ontario. Private providers will lure nurses and health-care professionals away from the public system, making the problem even worse.
Corporate profit-taking
When medical services become big business, public money is pulled away from direct patient care and skimmed as profit.
Fewer protections
The Ford government is rewriting the rules to allow for-profit providers to monitor and regulate the quality of care in their own facilities - a conflict of interest that could decrease transparency and accountability.
The slow death of public care
As more services are done by private providers, the public system receives less funding, eroding the quality and timeliness of care.
New user fees
Some health-care services won’t be fully covered by OHIP. Users will be made to pay, and may even be refused access to some services if their needs are complex or present liability issues.
